Teacher Tips: What To Do With Students Talking Too Much

Handling a talkative class is a problem that is as old as school education with no permanent remedy in sight. Teachers have had their share of complaints and resorted to several novel methods to attempt to have quiet classrooms. But invariably in every class, there are a few irrepressible students and it is difficult to make them stay quiet for long. Students who are talking too much is like an infectious disease and even the generally timid children get emboldened over a period of time and turn talkative making the whole class noisy.

Don’t Yell To Be Heard

Some teachers get angry or bitter or shout at students.Such tactics, more often than not, produce adverse results and make the teacher unpopular. A teacher shouting at the students only aggravates matters and the children also begin screaming at one another – in an attempt to be heard.

Teachers must find imaginative teacher tips to help devise some practical and yet pleasant methods to enforce discipline and keep the class quiet. An intelligent teacher pays more attention to positive behaviors on the part of students instead of overly dealing with negative behaviors. This is very effective in enforcing classroom discipline.

Revisit Seating Arrangement

Changing the seats of students is an old tested method to keep the class less noisy. This suggestion is not to change seats but rearrange a few seats in the shape of any letter, and then perhaps a few seats in a mirror image of the the letter, and even some seats in between the two. But remember, the shape of the letter which is formed in the arrangement must be easy to manage. For example, E is the best shape for this kind of stuff and has been tested successfully by many teachers.

Immediate Tricks

In a corner of the classroom, place a good conduct board to jot down the good behavior of individual students that also includes remaining quiet in class.

It may be worthwhile to allot a couple of minutes of free time to students to chat as this may reduce their urge to talk out of turn while the class is in progress. When students have doubts they may be asked to hold up a sign with a picture of a question mark on it to prevent many students creating noise at the same time on the pretext of seeking clarifications.

An innocuous and effective punishment recommended by many teachers is to curtail the recess by a few minutes for the talkative students. No student wants to lose free time even marginally and this method is proven to produce quiet in class.

A practical-minded teacher will buy a tiny bell to ring, and children talking after the warning bell has rung will be required to mark X on the behavior cards on their desks. Each X mark is worth two minutes of lost recess and the card also goes home at the end of the week for parents to know how their ward behaved in class.

A teacher has successfully tried to keep the class quiet by holding up her hand with the palm closed and releasing one finger after the other and the children are trained to say:

Eyes on the speaker

Lips Closed

Ears Listening

Sit Up Straight

Hands and Feet quiet

The class remains quiet for the rest of the period.

Most school teachers have clearly understood one thing – being academically qualified to teach and having thorough knowledge of the subject will not suffice. They must have inventive brains to devise teacher tips to keep students in line who are talking too much and create quiet classrooms as an end result.